Picking Māori vote

OPINION: Since 2005, the Māori seats have demonstrated loyalty to tribal servants while splitting the party and candidate vote to message a Labour-Māori Party coalition as the preferred vehicle for realising the aspiration of the 1930s' Wiremu Rātana-Michael Joseph Savage alliance. The will of the voters has never eventuated with one or the other dominating the Māori electorates and National winning the overall ballot.

Neither Labour nor the new Māori Party-Mana Movement accord will have their way in the Māori electorates this election. The message coming from the electorates endorses the renaissance in Labour through spectacular increases in the party vote in nearly all seats and sometimes also the candidate vote, while supporting the new Māori Party-Mana Movement mainly by the candidate vote and palliating against the record of both.

The new Māori Party-Mana Movement is paying a price for the acrimony of the 2014 election. And, despite Labour set to return a record number of Māori MPs and apologising across the board for the foreshore and seabed debacle, the position that everyone owns the water repeats the same foreshore and seabed undermining of the fundamental precept of........